Successful commercial construction of facilities, such as office buildings, residences, water systems and transportation facilities, is a complex interplay among engineers, architects, contractors, suppliers, manufacturers, and facility owners. Typically, all parties rely to a critical extent on at least two contract documents used in construction—plans and specifications. For simplicity “plans” and “specifications” will be used throughout and may express the singular as well as the plural.
Plans convey primarily technical details of the facility through architectural engineering drawings that depict the facility layout and through more detailed construction drawings that utilize symbols to explain construction features. However, because of their focus on the visual aspects, plans are limited in conveying descriptive information and to calling out features and items, i.e. “concrete,” “4 inch diameter pipe,” etc., without significant appended description.
Specifications convey further descriptive information by specifying processes, materials, and conditions for features. Some features such as columns, walls, and footings are normally built on-site. Other features such as doors, windows, railings, etc., may be produced off-site and shipped to the facility site. Contractors implement specifications for such items by either custom crafting them or seeking appropriate commercially available products from suppliers and manufacturers that match the specifications.
A few specifications that are essentially fungible have been standardized by industry trade groups. In contrast, items that are not fungible generally do not lend themselves to complete standardization. While a door, for example, comes in standard dimensions, i.e. single width or double width, that are easily represented on plans; the door also contains elements of style and taste. Is the door to be plain or paneled; painted or stained; made of oak or oak veneer; made of natural or artificial material? Is the locking mechanism to be brass, steel, or copper; keyed or unkeyed? Is there to be a doorknob, door handle, or slide? Each option is a decision that an architect and facility owner must carefully consider and specify in the contract documents.
In practice, it is rare that architects specify custom products because of vastly increased labor and production costs due to customization. Thus, architects consult manufacturers' and suppliers' catalogs to present appropriate products to their clients. Although a manufacturer may require drawings to make the requisite product, architects and engineers find it easiest to represent selected commercially available products using generic symbols in the plans and describe relevant processes, materials, and conditions more specifically in text form as specifications.
Towards that end, manufacturers and suppliers go to great lengths to make listings of their products known to professionals in the construction industry. Typically, manufacturers and suppliers print glossy photo-rich product catalogs complete with sample specifications. Further product dissemination occurs as trade groups and industry publishers prepare compilations of the product catalogs of many manufacturers and suppliers into periodically updated topical catalogs, i.e. one volume dedicated to windows and doors, another to piping, etc., that are available on a subscription basis.
While local practice varies, a typical specification for a fire-escape ladder in a larger specification document, often called a bid document, is illustrated in FIG. 1. Specifications commonly follow the Construction Specifications Institute three part description text formatting illustrated. Each “part” is subdivided into further topical sections which aggregate statements about the products. The relative location of this specification to other specifications is indicated by a section number, shown at label A. At label B, technical details of loading capacity, rise and tread, and safety requirements are provided. Since construction elements interrelate to other elements, for example at labels C, other sections are commonly referenced.
Architects and engineers often use the sample specifications provided in the catalogs to draft their own specifications for inclusion in the contract documents. However, as product lines and the number of available style options increase, the chance for errors in specifications compound, as the product may be available in certain styles only in combination with other styles. One method to reduce potential errors is to provide a template specification. The template includes one or more blanks. Instructions point users to specific areas of the catalog to complete the blanks. This method itself has several drawbacks. The main drawback is that specifications and the blank template are essentially collections of statements that relate to a product. To fill in a blank template specification an architect or engineer must “solve” the template much as one would solve a puzzle, one statement at a time. Afterwards, the completed specification must be painstakingly rechecked to fully evaluate that all statements are correctly related to the product and interrelated to other specifications. Doing so, the user has to solve the puzzle in a manner non-analogous to his or her thought process—whereas, architects think of a commercially available product as whole applications that they wish to add within the context of the facility design, they must rummage through all facets of the product specification in order to assure correctness.
Electronic availability of product catalogs from manufacturers and suppliers through web sites eases time and cost barriers inherent to publishing the same catalogs. However, to overcome the aforementioned drawback, each possible variant of a specification must be made a record in an exhaustive database and presented to a user electronically. A drawback to such a system is that a means to access each record must be made available. Including a link to the relevant specification next to the product and creating the specification in an active server page is one way to accomplish this. By contrast, an outline format listing of all products where a user drills down to the desired product is an inconvenient way to access a specification. In an outline, a product having multiple style options may be correctly placed within the outline in multiple locations according to each option. Even when a means is established to access the database, access is made to a complete specification thus requiring a database with an extensive duplication of the same specification.
What is desired, therefore, is a system and method for preparing and presenting a construction specification to a user upon user input which is easier, faster and more accurate than known construction specification preparation techniques.
It is also desired to provide a system and method for promoting clients to a receptive audience by preparing and presenting one or more construction specifications to a user upon user input.